I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezekiel 5-8.

    Like Jeremiah, Ezekiel frequently used metaphors, although Ezekiel’s are a little more performance art than Jeremiah’s. In today’s passage, Ezekiel had just spent almost a year laying on his side facing a map of Jerusalem which he had drawn. At the end of that time, he shaved his head and divided his hair into portions. One portion he burned, one portion he scattered on his map and chopped with a sword, and the final third he scattered on the wind. I can just picture him standing there chopping at the hair with a sword.

    However, it is the message about why the predicted destruction is coming to which we need to pay the closest attention. Through Ezekiel God tells the people of Jerusalem, who considered themselves to be the People of God, that they had behaved worse than their neighbors. Despite having the laws of God to give them a true standard of righteousness they had failed to live up to the standard to which the people around them held. Not only had they failed to live up to God’s standard of righteousness, they had failed to live up to the standard of those who made no claim to being righteous. Actually, it was worse than that. They did not FAIL to live up to the standard of their neighbors, they intentionally violated it. Then in Ezekiel’s next vision, God calls out the spiritual leaders of Jerusalem who are secretly practicing idol worship. The passage does not spell it out, but it seems to suggest that this idol worship involved detestable practices (sex acts, mutilation of both self and sacrificial victims, sacrifice of children). The important part is that the people of Jerusalem were publicly declaring themselves to be serving God, but were privately serving other gods. The message here is similar to Paul’s message about the qualifications for leadership in the Church. Those we appoint to positions of leadership should be living a truly righteous life, not merely talking about doing so. There is a second message as well (actually, this message came first). If we consider ourselves to be the People of God we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard than the culture around us. We need to set an example of what it means to do as God instructs.